| April 18, 2011

IMLA welcomes our new intern for the month of April, from the country of Georgia.

I am Teona Tavelishvili. I am visiting here through the Legislative Fellows Program organized by American Councils for International Education in hopes of learning about how local governments operate in the United States. The program facilitates month long internships with local and state governments throughout the United States and is designed to help young professionals from other countries gain a better understanding of the legislative and political processes.

I am lawyer of the local administrative body of Sagarejo municipality. This is a town in Kakheti, in eastern Georgia with 12,000 population. During my interning period I attended the Mid-Year Seminar which took place in Washington DC. I met representatives of counties, city attorneys and other members of IMLA from different states of America. I listened to their interesting speeches and representatives shared each other their municipality’s issues. They were talking about their counties problems and offered their solving ways. Some of them are similar to my municipality’s others are not. But what I found interested here is that this organization makes many good things for municipalities and such meetings and seminars is very important, to improve working systems in local bodies.

My great desire is when I go back to my country tell my region about IMLA and make presentation about the functions and goals of IMLA and offer Georgians to create the similar organization in our country.

This blog is made possible by the International Municipal Lawyers Association (IMLA), but may include guest bloggers (who are attorneys with experience in local government matters) who might or might not work for IMLA. Their views (and those expressed on this site) do not necessarily express the views of IMLA.